


Potsherds

by somepallings



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Childermassive, Established Relationship, M/M, Poetry, Starecrossed Lovers, Time Travel, didn't want to leave them on tumblr anf my notes app, just some fragments that I might pick up again later, magical goings on at Starecross, whitby goth weekend
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:07:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23032204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somepallings/pseuds/somepallings
Summary: Some bits and pieces that I've written for fun or on the spur of the moment that I might pick up again later. And a poem that I wrote just to show off.
Relationships: John Childermass/John Segundus
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	1. I Greet Thee Lord

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wrote this on a night when the wind was blowing straight from the far lands on the other side of Hell. Thank you to touchmytardis for the encouragement!

John Segundus was awake at gone three in the morning and he was thinking about commonplace phrases.

  
_Blowing a gale_ was certainly one, but it really was the only thing that could describe the night outside. His window shutters were banging, his bed curtains were fluttering and he was sure he could hear voices on the wind that howled past the windows and through every nook and cranny of Starecross’s ancient walls.  
He had blown out his candle some hours before but sleep had proven impossible to catch.

  
He remembered thinking that the leaves in the brook running past Starecross looked like writing in a language he could not read, and he fancied that the voices he could hear in the wind were speaking that same language. He tried to open his mind, his heart, to the words, but understanding was no easier to catch than sleep.

  
He shivered a little under his blankets. Something blew over outside with a faraway crash, making him flinch. He hoped that wasn’t the chickens. They’d had enough fox problems without a hole in the side of the shed. Usually, on a stormy night, he’d be very content to be warm in bed with the curtains drawn and his feet warmed by the stone hot-water bottle Charles had filled for him before bed.

  
Tonight was different, though. The sheer force of the wind was enough to shake the very foundations of the house, and Segundus wasn’t entirely confident that all of the windows would stand up to it. He hoped that the students were sleeping soundly. The student wing was more sheltered, so he thought they might be bearing less of the brunt.   
The voices whispered on and on.

  
A shock of hail spattered against the window, shaking him from his musings. He began to wonder if he should simply get up and do something useful. There was no shortage of work he could be getting on with as the headmaster of a school of magic. He could even prepare a lesson based on the magic of wind and air to help any students who might be yawning in the morning to feel that their sleepless night had not been wasted.

  
Resolving to do just that, he reached out and pulled back the bed curtain, revealing a room lit very softly by the light of his dying fire, and braced his feet for the cold wooden floor. As he did so, his bedroom door softly clicked open by itself and swung inwards, revealing four inches of black hallway.

  
_Only a draught,_ he thought, _only the wind_ , though he trembled a little where he sat.

  
The wind voices were louder now. He thought of the Basque sailor.

  
_I greet thee, Lord and bid thee welcome to my heart._

  
A swirl of wind came into the room, ruffling the bed curtains and containing a voice. A familiar voice, saying an understandable word:

“John”.

  
He got out of bed. The floor was as cold as he had feared, but his curiosity and the distinct tang of magic in the air drew him forward. He reached for the door knob with a trembling hand and pulled the door wide onto the dark of the corridor beyond.


	2. Abracadabra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saw this on Twitter and I had to do it: https://www.patreon.com/posts/34077702
> 
> "Recently, the word “Abracadabra” popped into my mind, and I thought, “That word looks like a rhyme scheme.” You know, like the rhyme scheme for a Shakespearean-style sonnet is ABABCDCDEFEFGG. I imagined a poem with the rhyme scheme ABRACADABRA."
> 
> The creator has specified anapestic tetrameter, but I chose to ignore that.

  
**Cathedral magic, snow and morning light,**   
**He smiled at you, expectant, but of what?**   
**It seemed to be just you and him, the world**   
**Lay distant, just outside of sound and sight.**   
**Did magic breed forgetting, or just time?**   
**Each step since then has kept you turning right,**   
**Rotating, moving inwards to this place,**   
**Meeting him on doorstep, bearing blight,**   
**And later: “do the magic!”, overwraught.**   
**Something that day partially unfurled,**   
**Swift wings tensed for freedom’s joyful flight.**

**Joy did not feature often in your dreams**   
**Or so you’d said, until you saw his grin.**   
**He seemed an honest man. You rolled your eyes.**   
**No magician is ever what he seems.**   
**So you went on, so firm, so resolute,**   
**End-hope, Book-snatch, crusher of treasured schemes.**   
**Gentlemen’s plans are nothing you’d regard**   
**Until he stared with sad dark eyes agleam.**   
**Now he greets you, frail but fires burn within.**   
**“Do the magic!”, and something in you cries,**   
**Understanding wakes, a salmon bursts upstream.**   
**Some men hide multitudes beneath their skin.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (You’ll notice that JS got an extra line because his name has 12 letters, so he is technically ABRACADABRAB. The last line refers to both of them anyway, really.)


	3. Across the water, across the wave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My friend messaged me while I was sleeping and they were working the nightshift saying "imagine Strange and Norrell met up at Whitby Goth Weekend" and of course I said "YES BUT JOHNSQUARED".
> 
> You can see the whole nonsense including screenshots and me being mildly snarky about Wayne Hussey here: https://somepallings.tumblr.com/post/190793001307/the-best-thing-about-knowing-someone-who-works

“John, ” said Segundus suddenly placing his hand atop Childermass’s as it lay on the table top. Childermass looked at him sharply, not willing to snatch his hand back but wary of such display in the public space of a Whitby taproom. “Pray do not stare, but there are some very oddly-dressed people just arrived behind you. I cannot think who they might be, in such strange get-up. They must have come off some boat or other!” Segundus continued, staring wide-eyed past Childermass’s shoulder despite his request that he not do that very thing. Childermass carefully drew his hand back, curling one finger around one of Segundus’s as he did so, and turned to look. Immediately he grew as wide-eyed as his companion. 

Three individuals had just entered the taproom, just as Segundus had said. And they were most oddly dressed! Apart from anything else, two of them were the most immodestly dressed women he’d ever seen in a respectable inn like this one. One was wearing nothing on top but her stays, made of silk or another shiny black fabric, and on her lower half a skirt so short as to make Childermass wonder why she had bothered to wear it at all. Her stockings were made of what looked like fish netting. 

The other woman was dressed in a strange and manly fashion, in tight leather breeches that came to below the knee, striped black and white socks and a matching striped shirt that clung to her body and was made of very little material. Perhaps strangest of all to his eyes was the third person, a young man with very long hair, who was wearing strange lose pantaloons that reached almost to the floor and were covered in loops, clips and hooks, though they were not being used to store tools or useful items. 

His shirt was also made of thin, sparse material and appeared to have been intricately painted on the front with the image of a demonic pope. All three of them had eyes ringed with kohl, though even in Childermass’s days as a sailor out of this very port he had never seen such costumes on Easterners before. Besides, this lot were far too pink and pasty to be from any further East than Robin Hood’s Bay. 

The newcomers were scanning the taproom for free tables and Segundus and Childermass realised at the same moment that those darkened eyes lit on them that their table was the only one with any empty seats. At the same time, both men gasped as a wave of strange magic washed over them. Segundus gasped and scrabbled for Childermass’s hand once more. “Fairies, John?” he whispered in a tremulous voice. “I do not think so, ” Childermass replied, “it does not feel like fairy magic. Remember when Lady Pole was at Starecross? Does this feel alike to you?” Segundus only shook his head. The strangers were approaching and he at once set to making his features pleasant and personable. Whoever these odd creatures were, it would not do to be impolite Childermass continued to stare at them stony-faced. ‘Alright lads?’ said one of the three, the woman who was wearing nothing atop her stays. ‘Mind if we sit here? Pub’s packed.’ She was already sitting as she said this. Segundus, realising that Childermass was not going to say anything, gestured to the empty seats on what he thought was a welcoming manner. 

The trio sat, and the man bedecked with the picture of the antipope leaned towards Childermass, seemingly fascinated by his waistcoat. Childermass looked down his nose at him with an expression that seemed to say 'what a strange and pathetic little thing you are’ but that Segundus knew actually meant 'I do not quite know what to say or do but I am not about to let you know that’. “Here that’s brilliant mate. Love your outfits, are yous, like, LARPers or reenactors or something? Suppose you’re hiding from the 'togs in here, they must love you. ” he said. Getting no response, he was undaunted, but rose, saying, as he pointed to his companions one by one: “Pint? Pint.” He turned to Segundus and Childermass and asked: “How about you boys, couple of pints of Strongarm?” Astonished by the whole affair and still slightly dizzy from whatever weird magic was afoot, the two Johns could only nod dumbly.

As her male companion turned towards the bar, the woman in the striped shirt picked up Segundus’s tricorn from the table. “Aww mate can I try on your hat?”


End file.
